To Cook
by Britedark
Summary: For the fall harvest festival, old!Inuyasha reveals an unexpected talent. Part of the ongoing set of stories setting an elderly Inuyasha in modern-day Tokyo.


**_**Disclaimer:**_**_ This story is based on "Inuyasha," copyrighted by Rumiko Takahashi. No infringement of copyright intended or implied. _

* * *

><p><strong>To Cook<strong>

Returning to the kitchen dressed in her kimono she wore for festivals, Mrs. Higurashi took a careful seat at the kitchen table, watching the cook with a bemused smile. Tan sleeves tied back, he handled his instruments with surprising deftness, scooping the rice dumplings out of their bath of boiling water, stacking them neatly on the plate, adding more doughy spheres to the pot.

She mused on how much he had changed since that chill spring day, when the 'monster' had appeared at her door. Then, he had been a worn, fragile shell of his former self, half-starved, filthy, clinging to life for little more than a promise. Now, though he wore the face still of his youkai blood, a half a year of good food, shelter, clean clothes and a warm bed had changed him. He had put on weight, gained strength, and energy. And, most important, he had regained a family, and a desire to live.

The click of the gas being turned off returned her attention to the present. Turning slowly, Inuyasha carefully walked to the table with the tray of tsukimi dango and set it down. "Hope you don't mind carrying this," he said. "I'm afraid I might lose my balance and drop it."

She smiled impishly. "You volunteered to help cook, how can I object?"

He returned her smile as he started to wrestle with the tie of the ribbon. He had unfastened it by the time she was by his side, but he did not object when she reached around for the apron ties. Leaving apron and ribbon on a chair back, she picked up the haori she had purchased for him several months ago and helped him into it. Fastening it, she smoothed down the front. "You surprised me when you offered to cook, you know," she said. "It shouldn't have surprised me that you know how to cook—I mean, there must have been plenty of times in your life when there was no one else to cook for you. But, why for the o-tsukumi?

"He chuckled. "When you started talking about autumn moon festival, that's when I started to remember when I first realized that I wanted to learn to cook for real-not just sticking a fish over a fire kind of cooking."

"Oh?" She picked up the tray and headed towards the entrance. "Did Kagome finally get tired of you preferring pickles to her omelets?"

Inuyasha laughed at the reminder of one of his infamous reactions to Kagome's cooking during the quest. "I wasn't trying to be insulting—the pickles were better than scorched omelet, even if the others wouldn't admit it. No, it wasn't Kagome, not directly. It was Aimiko."

"Aimiko?" She echoed the name of Inuyasha's and Kagome's first-born daughter. "What did she do?"

"More what she said." He paused as they reached the step down at the entrance, shifting the sword he'd been using as a cane to his other hand, reaching out to the cabinet to balance himself as he stepped down. Temporarily setting the scabbarded Tessaiga on top of the cabinet, he took the tray back so that she could take her geta out of the cabinet and put them on. Returning the tray, he found his own footwear and put them on, and then reached for the straw hat that would hide his ears and keep his face in shadow. The shrine did not hold any public ceremonies for the harvest festival during the evening when the full moon rose, but they had a standing invitation to friends and relatives who wanted to celebrate the arrival of the harvest moon with them. Weather permitting, they set up an altar near Goshinboku, with the rice dumplings one of the offerings to the moon that would go on that altar.

"Aimiko was five," he continued, "and Kagome was about seven months pregnant with Shoichi. I was coming back from a patrol when Aimiko races out of the house to tell me that mama had dropped the kettle into the fire pit and splashed water over everything, and she was crying and crying."

"Goodness: she wasn't hurt, was she?"

"Just tired and upset. I picked Aimiko up, and that's when she asked why mama had to do all the cooking, when she was so big in the middle and tired all the time."

Mrs. Higurashi laughed. "Cooking can be so frustrating when you're pregnant. The first few months, you never know when the smell of the food is suddenly going to make you nauseous; the last few, you either are just wanting to get off your feet, or the baby chooses to start kicking just as you're trying to concentrate on the recipe. So what happened next?"

"We went back to the hut. Kagome was just sitting there crying: I carried her over to the futon and told her to take a nap. I cleaned things up and started a new fire, put the kettle on, and then Aimiko brings in the first plate of raw dumplings and tells me that she'd helped mama to make these for the moon, and could I please cook them, so mama wouldn't have to get up again?"

"Dare I ask how they came out?" Mrs. Higurashi asked, as she set the tray on the altar.

He sighed. "At least, you can't burn dumplings. It was mostly a soggy mess, but Kagome just smiled and thanked me for trying. And, we hadn't planned to watch the moonrise with anyone else, so no one else got to see that effort."

"So, you asked Kagome to teach you?" She moved some of the other items on the altar, and brushed a finger against one of the autumnal flowers in a vase.

"I told her to sit down and tell me what to do," he agreed. "She tried to argue at one point, saying that she knew it was the woman's job to do the cooking. But, I'd remembered that my mother tried to teach me a few things in secret, telling me that I'd have to do it on my own someday: but I didn't why understand at the time, since the servants always brought in meals, sooner or later. And, I wanted to help Kagome."

"Well, you clearly learned."

"Eventually," Inuyasha agreed. He looked up at the tree. "The next year, I packed everyone up and took them out to mother's grave, for the moonrise. It really was the best place to watch the moon rise, with the lake, and I wanted to show mother I'd finally learned what she had tried to teach me."

"That cooking was important?"

He laughed softly, and turned towards her. "Nope. That a man able to cook, is one of the best ways to win a woman's gratitude and affection."

And he leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

She laughed, and hugged him.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>This was written for the LiveJournal community "FirstTweak", for the prompt "I Remember Mama." It was originally posted on September 25, 2011. It took first place.

And I'm rather pleased for with this piece, having managed to link the theme in twice over - since Inuyasha remembers both his mother, Izayoi, and Kagome when she was a mother.

(11/2/2011)


End file.
